Close Reading
During the unit on The Handmaid’s Tale, Nicole, Anastasia and Nem exhibited growth in their formulation of written arguments. They continued, however, to have difficulty incorporating an analysis of the language itself into these arguments. Their challenges were representative of those facing the majority of the class.
I suspected that part of why the students experienced this difficulty was because they lacked a framework for how to close read a passage. To this end, I introduced a seven step close reading framework for the students. As a class we used it to analyze a passage from Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak (our close reading of this passage serves as the header for each of the pages on this site), and then students completed a variety of partial close readings, culminating in a full close reading of a passage of their choosing from Catcher in the Rye.
The goal for all of these assignments was to help the students become more comfortable with the prospect of close reading passages as a strategy for analyzing texts as a whole.
I suspected that part of why the students experienced this difficulty was because they lacked a framework for how to close read a passage. To this end, I introduced a seven step close reading framework for the students. As a class we used it to analyze a passage from Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak (our close reading of this passage serves as the header for each of the pages on this site), and then students completed a variety of partial close readings, culminating in a full close reading of a passage of their choosing from Catcher in the Rye.
The goal for all of these assignments was to help the students become more comfortable with the prospect of close reading passages as a strategy for analyzing texts as a whole.